


It Had to be You

by BonitaBreezy



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: AU, Complete, Friends to Lovers, M/M, but not really, kind of a college au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-01
Updated: 2013-07-01
Packaged: 2017-12-16 18:27:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/865199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BonitaBreezy/pseuds/BonitaBreezy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Natasha breaks up with Clint and moves across the country, he doesn't handle it well.  Good thing Phil is there to take care of him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It Had to be You

_I get lost, messed up and bored when I'm alone too long_  
 _I can't sleep, function or eat when I'm not with someone_  
 _Late last fall, she ended it all and moved to who-knows-where_  
 _Just like that, she vanished and packed and never even called_  
  
 _Do you feel a certain sense of synergy between yourself and me?_  
 _A kind of macabre and somber Wonder-twin kind of harmony_  
 _What if it was you?_  
 _You that I needed all along_  
 _I felt like a fool,_  
 _Kicking and screaming and pretending we were wrong_

Clint let himself into his apartment, awkwardly balancing a twelve pack of Coke and a six pack of expensive Belgian beer Natasha liked while he tried to free his key from the door knob.  The beer had a slight raspberry flavor to it, and Clint thought it was kind of gross, but Nat liked it.  She’d seemed to be upset about something that morning, and he was hoping doing something nice and unasked for her might cheer her up a little.

“Hey Tasha, I got you some…” Clint trailed off when he spotted the two suitcases sitting in the hall, side by side with Natasha’s coat draped over them.  He set the drinks down on the kitchen counter with a heavy thud, his heart pounding painfully in his chest.  Natasha stepped into the hallway, her face somber as she looked at him.

“Are you going somewhere?” he asked her, and he hated himself for how weak his voice sounded.

“I’m moving out,” she said. “This isn’t working.”

“I didn’t know it wasn’t working,” Clint said, taking a step towards her.  Her arms came up to cross under her breasts, a defensive closed stance, and he wished he knew what he had done so he could try to fix it.  He knew he was shit at relationships.  He always had been.  But he had thought that what he had with Natasha was going pretty well.

“I love you…”

“I love you, too,” he interrupted quickly, hoping to salvage a three year relationship that was falling to pieces at his feet. 

“I know you do,” she sighed. “But we’re not right for each other.  Can’t you feel that? What we have is good, but it’s not amazing.  I’m content with you, but I’m not really happy.  And you aren’t either, I know you aren’t.”

“Fuck you!” Clint yelled back, suddenly furious. “How dare you try and tell me how I feel? You’re trying to pin this on me, when you’re walking out on a good thing!  We love each other and we have a good life together, why isn’t that good enough?” He stopped himself before he could ask why _he_ wasn’t good enough.  He wanted to be angry, not pitiful.

“I’m not in love with you,” she said. “I thought I was, but I’m not.  You’re my best friend, but I can’t be in a relationship with you anymore.  It’s not…right.  It doesn’t feel right.  I know that there’s someone better out there for both of us.”

“Please, Tasha,” he begged quietly, unable to hold on to the anger in the face of utter heartbreak and despair. “Please don’t do this.  There’s no one better for me than you.  No one.

“You’ll understand what I mean someday, Clint.  When you’ve cleared me out of your system and can think straight, you’ll realize that this is for the best.  You’re wrong about me being the best for you, and you’ll come to see that.” Natasha’s tone was gentle and even.  Clint almost felt like a cornered animal, the way she was talking to him like he might do something drastic at any moment.  “I know that you’re wrong for me, and I have to go because it’s not right for either of us to continue doing this when it’s not the best for us.  I love you and I hope that we’ll be able to be friends again eventually, but I realize you need time.  I need time, too.  I’ve been in contact with the Stark ballet company and they’ve offered me the lead in their fall tour of _Giselle_.  Rehearsals start in two weeks.  In Malibu.”

“Malibu?” Clint interrupted, his voice cracking in his shock. “You’re moving to California? Are you that desperate to get away from me?”

“This isn’t all about you, Clint,” she snapped. “It’s a good opportunity, a great way to make connections and get experience.  I’m not even leaving until school gets out.  But I’ll be staying with Maria until then.”

She grabbed her jacket from atop her suitcase, pulling it on and cinching it at the waist.  As she grabbed the handle of her suitcase, Clint made one last desperate effort.

“Please, Nat, can’t we talk about this?” he begged, grabbing the hand that held the suitcase.

“I’m sorry, Clint,” she said again. “There’s nothing else to talk about, not right now.  Maria is waiting for me downstairs.  I can’t love you the way you deserve to be loved, Clint.  I hope you understand that.”  And with that she pulled her hand from his loose grip and made her way out of the apartment pulling her suitcases behind her.  He didn’t help her with the door, just watched her struggle to do it herself, and then sank to the floor with is back to the wall and stared at the floor for a few minutes.

He didn’t know how long he sat there, but it was long enough for the apartment to go dark from the sun setting.  When his cell phone started buzzing in his pocket he snapped out of his stupor, but he didn’t check it.  He pushed himself to his feet and stumbled to the freezer to get the bottle of expensive Russian vodka that Natasha saved for special occasions.  Having retrieved it, he slid back down to the floor and sat with his back against the cupboards, resolving to get utterly shitfaced. 

The first pull had him almost gagging and wishing he’d thought to grab the carton of orange juice from the fridge for a chaser.  The second wasn’t as bad, but it burned going down.  After the fifth pull he didn’t really taste it, and by the time he’d downed half the bottle he didn’t give a shit about anything anymore.  It was nice.

After he finished another half of what was left, the world was spinning and Clint thought he might puke, so he lowered himself down to the floor, pressing his cheek to the cool linoleum.  He closed his eyes tightly, hoping to calm down the roiling in his stomach.  He reached out blindly for the bottle he’d set to the side, unscrewing the cap and tilting it towards his mouth.  He managed to get more of it on the floor and across his face than in his mouth, but he really didn’t care.  It wasn’t like it mattered.

A sudden loud knocking at the door made him jump and spill more of his vodka on the floor.  He frowned at the bottle before flicking his eyes to the door.  He made no move to get up and answer it.  Even if he wanted to, he wasn’t sure that he could.  The knocking continued on for another minute, and then after a short pause the lock clicked and the door opened.

The intruder flipped on the light, and Clint cried, “Phil!”

“Jesus Christ, Clint,” Phil responded, sounding disappointed in the way that only Phil could. “Why didn’t you answer the door?”

“I can’t get up,” Clint told him, giggling. “I think I’m gonna puke.”

“You better not do it out here,” Phil warned him. “I’m not cleaning it up.”  He shut the front door behind him and entered the kitchen, stepping carefully around the spilled booze and kneeling in front of Clint.  He gently took the bottle from Clint’s hand and set it up on the counter, out of reach.

“No, I need that,” Clint said belatedly, reaching up futilely for the bottle.

“You’ve had more than enough,” Phil disagreed. “Come on, let’s get you up. I don’t know what I expected to find.  Natasha did say…” And the sudden happiness that Clint had felt at Phil’s arrival blew right out the window at the reminder of Natasha.  He slumped suddenly against Phil’s lifting hands, leaning back against the cabinets with a loud bang.

“She left me,” he told Phil, desperate sadness flowing over him again. “She said she loved me but she left.  Why do people always do that?”

Phil stared at him for a long moment in silence, but then he closed his eyes and shook his head.  He got his arms under Clint’s and lifted, and Clint clumsily wrapped his arms around Phil’s shoulders and buried his face in Phil’s neck.

“You haven’t left me.  You always take care of me,” he muttered, his filter entirely blown.  He knew vaguely in the back of his brain that he’d be really embarrassed by this if he remembered it tomorrow, but that couldn’t stop his word vomit. “You’re not gonna leave me, are you Phil?”  He stumbled to his feet under Phil’s guidance, still clinging to his best friend like a leech.

“No, I’m not,” Phil assured him. “Come on, let’s get you to bed.” They started taking slow, shuffling steps, and Clint groaned.

“No. No, no, no, Phil I’m gonna puke,” he protested, pushing away, to go where he didn’t really know.

“Okay, okay,” Phil soothed. “Do you think you can make it to the bathroom? It’s less than five steps away.” Clint nodded and they started moving again.  They made it about two steps into the bathroom before Clint let go of Phil and flung himself at the toilet, vomiting violently.  He spent a few minutes emptying his stomach, regretting all the booze but thankful that he hadn’t actually eaten anything.  When he finally felt confident enough to lift his head again, Phil was waiting for him with a bottle of water.  He let Clint swish his mouth out and then they started back towards Clint’s room.  He stopped at the door, not letting Phil budge him anymore.

“I can’t.  All her stuff will be gone and the bed’s gonna smell like her,” he protested.

“Okay.  You want to sleep on the couch?” Phil asked.  Clint nodded miserably and let Phil lead him back to the couch.  Clint barely had time to collapse onto it before he passed out.

…

Clint came back to consciousness with a pounding headache.  He could see the sunlight streaming in through the windows and he hated it with every inch of his body.  He didn’t think he’d ever been so hungover in his life, and the smell of cooking breakfast wafting from the kitchen made him feel vaguely ill.  He wondered if he could get away with never opening his eyes ever again, but he didn’t think Phil would allow it.

He very vaguely remembered Phil showing up the night before and hauling him into the bathroom.  He remembered babbling a lot, but he had no idea what he said.  He supposed he should be thankful, because not only had Phil not left him to drown in a puddle of his own vomit, but he’d also brought him somewhere comfortable to lie down, so at least he wouldn’t be sore from sleeping on the floor as well as hung over.  Clint heaved a sigh, steeling his nerves to open his eyes, and finally just went for it.  His head seared with pain immediately at the added light, but now that his eyes were open he could see a pair of dark sunglasses sitting on the coffee table next to a bottle of purple Gatorade and two white pills.

He went for the sunglasses first, sighing as they made the room just a little bit more bearable.  He took the pills next, washing them down with a mouthful of the Gatorade that he knew for a fact he hadn’t had yesterday.  He knew he should work on drinking to help alleviate the hangover, but his stomach was rebelling at the idea.  He settled for taking little sips and staring at the wall while willing his headache away.

“You look awesome,” Phil snorted as he entered the room, a plate in each hand.  He set one on the table in front of Clint and then nudged at Clint’s legs until he moved them so Phil could sit down on the couch.

“Fuck you,” Clint grumbled, staring dubiously at the omelet on the plate in front of him.

“That’s a fine way to talk to the guy who picked your drunk ass off the floor at two a.m. and then made you breakfast,” Phil retorted. “Eat.”

“Phil, I will throw up all over everything if you make me eat,” Clint said.  He was sure if it was a threat or a promise, but Phil didn’t look all that concerned.

“It will help your hangover,” Phil wheedled, taking a healthy bite of his own omelet. “Eggs and tomatoes restore amino acids and Vitamin C.  Spinach restores electrolytes.  It’ll make you feel better, I swear.”

Clint doubtfully looked at his omelet for a moment.  He really didn’t feel like eating, but Phil seemed pretty earnest.  Clint was absolutely positive that he hadn’t had spinach or tomatoes or Gatorade in his fridge the day before, which meant that Phil had not only taken care of him, but had also gone out to the store to get things to make Clint feel better.  He’d feel like a total dick if he didn’t at least try to eat.  And if he threw up, well, there was a bucket placed next to the couch expressly for that purpose.

He took a tentative bite of his omelet, letting out a little moan when he tasted it.  It was simple but delicious, and suddenly his stomach was growling.  He took another bite and Phil smiled at him approvingly. 

They ate in relative silence, Phil periodically reminding Clint to take a drink of his Gatorade.  Phil was most definitely babying him.  Usually when he was hung over, Phil was an absolute dick about it, in the way only true friends could be.  He was being so nice and helpful today, and Clint knew it was because of Natasha.  He was trying not to think about it, but the more his headache cleared up, the harder it was to ignore the big empty space in the apartment.

A lot of Natasha’s things were still there, but certain important things like the picture of her parents that usually sat on the shelf to the left of the TV and the toe shoes that usually hung by their ribbons on the closet door handle, were gone.  The last few bites of his omelet were dry in his mouth, and the cloud of depression swept over him quickly and thoroughly.  Phil obviously noticed, because brought their plates to the sink, came back with another bottle of Gatorade, and made his way to the TV.  He popped in a DVD and came back to sit on the couch.  Clint knew it would be something action-y with a lot of explosions and just a little plot, and he didn’t think he’d ever appreciated Phil so much as he did in that moment.

“Hey,” he said quietly, and Phil turned to look at him. “Thanks.”

Phil just nodded in acknowledgement and returned his focus to the movie.  Clint followed his lead, and tried not to think too much.

Three ridiculous action movies and four bottles of Gatorade later, Clint felt much less hungover, but also much more depressed about Natasha leaving.  Phil had taken over the coffee table and part of the couch with his books and laptop because he had a final paper due on Thursday and wasn’t dying of a broken heart.  Clint had slinked into his bedroom so he could surround himself with Natasha’s scent and curl the blankets around himself to pretend that it was her holding him.  Some of her things were still scattered around the room, and it took a lot of effort to resist the urge to gather them up and surround himself with them like a deranged bird making a nest.

He wasn’t sure if being surrounded by her smell in the bed they’d shared together for over a year made him feel better or worse, but he couldn’t work up the energy to move.  He couldn’t really bring himself to care about anything, really.  He knew he’d missed two classes today, one of which had been review for the final on Thursday.  He had to work tonight, but he really didn’t think he was capable of serving tons of alcohol to the pre-dead week rush when he still wanted to drink himself into oblivion.  He should call in.  But his cell phone was nowhere to be found, and he wasn’t positive he wouldn’t call Natasha and leave her pathetic messages instead of calling his boss.  He curled his legs up to his stomach, pulling the burgundy comforter that Natasha had spent two weeks picking out up over his face.  Doing absolutely nothing seemed to be the best choice for now.

* * *

 

Clint hibernated in his room for three straight days.  He didn’t leave his bed unless he had to pee or got very thirsty, and even then he kept the comforter wrapped around his shoulders and up over his head like a cloak.  He knew Phil was sticking around, because he wasn’t actually sleeping that much and could hear his friend moving around the apartment every once in a while.  It was on the fourth day that Phil apparently grew tired of treading lightly around Clint.

The bedroom door swung open and slammed into the wall, making Clint jump in his nest of blankets.  He turned to look at Phil, who was standing in the door frame with his arms crossed over his chest, with the saddest puppy dog expression he could muster.  Phil wasn’t at all fazed.

“Clint, get up,” he commanded. “I’ve been letting you mope hoping you’d sort yourself out, but it’s pretty clear you’re not going to do that, so I’m going to make you.  I called in to work for you for three days, I emailed your professors telling them you were sick, but I’m done with that now.  You’ve got the first of your finals tomorrow and you have to work the day after that.”

“Phil,” Clint protested, his voice sounding croaky from lack of use. “I can’t…”

“You can,” Phil responded. “You’re a grown ass man and you have responsibilities and yeah, your girlfriend dumped you.  It happens, Clint.  I’m sorry you’re so upset, but you’ve got to start getting over it.  Do you think Natasha has spent the last week drinking and moping in bed?  Now get up and go take a shower.  You smell.”

Clint stared at him incredulously for a long moment, and apparently Phil really was done with being nice because crossed the room in three long strides and dragged Clint out of the bed by his ankle.  Clint cussed at him the whole time, but caught himself before his head hit the floor and got to his feet.

“Fine! I’ll shower. Jesus Christ, Phil,” he grumbled, heading to the bathroom.

“And put on clean clothes when you get out,” Phil instructed sternly, shutting the bathroom door firmly behind Clint.

“Yes mom,” Clint grumbled under his breath, but he did as he was told.  The hot shower felt really good, better than he would have thought a shower could feel, and brushing his teeth was the best decision he’d made in days.  By the time he was done and clean, he felt better enough to admit that maybe Phil had a point.  Natasha clearly didn’t care as much as he had, and she wasn’t going to come back, so maybe it was time to start trying to clean her out of his system.

When he got back to his room, his sheets had been stripped and he could hear the washing machine running.  He almost wanted to protest, but then decided the sheets had probably smelled as bad as he had, and Phil hadn’t really had a choice but to wash them.  He realized that he was starving and immediately went out to the kitchen to find something to eat.  There was a half-full box of pizza sitting on the counter, and it looked new enough.  He figured Phil had eaten it for lunch, and helped himself to three slices before his stomach was too full for him to manage anything else.

After that, he actually sat down at the coffee table and taken over what space Phil hadn’t to start studying for his Calculus III final.  He definitely still wasn’t okay, but he was better than he had been.  Phil approved, clearly, because he gave Clint a small smile when he sat down with his text books.  That alone had made Clint feel just a bit better, and now the swirl of numbers and formulas in his head were enough to keep his thoughts from straying to his sadness.  They’d even gotten to the point where they were joking around and contemplating going out to get dinner and a few drinks when there was a knock on the door.

When Clint answered it, his good mood died a swift death, because Maria Hill was there and she had a stack of cardboard boxes in her arms.  Clint liked Maria well enough.  On a good day he would even consider her a friend, but he’d never hated her more than when she told him she was there to pick up the rest of Natasha’s things.  He wanted to tell her to fuck off and shut the door in her face, but at the same time he kind of wanted her to get Natasha’s things away from him so he wouldn’t have to torment himself with them anymore.  She’d started to look uneasy by the time he stepped back to let her inside.

“She can’t fucking have the _Dog Cops_ box set,” he told Maria as she headed towards the shelf with all the DVDs lined up on it. “I paid for that.”

Maria only nodded and started selecting the DVDs she knew for sure were Natasha’s.  Clint didn’t bother to help, but for pointing out which objects were his when Maria tried to box them, but Phil followed her around the whole apartment, helping her to pack away Natasha’s whole existence there in less than half an hour.  She’d awkwardly said her goodbyes before heading out, and Clint scowled at Phil as soon as the door was shut behind her.

“Nice of you to help her pack Natasha neatly out of my life,” he said, feeling hurt and sad and a whole other spectrum of emotions he couldn’t even put a name to.

“I just wanted to make sure she only took what was Natasha’s,” Phil answered calmly. “I wasn’t trying to hurt you.  This really was for the best, Clint…”

“She’s actually gone,” Clint said, his voice a pathetic whisper. “That’s it.  All her stuff is gone, she’s gone.  The only things left are the pictures of us she didn’t even fucking want.”  It all hit him right in that moment.  All the pain and the hurt and the uncertainty and the abandonment had all finally piled up so high that it spilled over, and suddenly Clint was a sobbing mess on his living room floor.  Phil made a pained noise, watching from where he was standing, but then he was kneeling on the floor besides Clint and pulling him into his arms to attempt to comfort him.  Clint just gasped out another sob and clung to Phil like a life raft in the middle of the ocean.  He buried his fingers in the fabric of Phil’s shirt and pushed his face into Phil’s neck and cried until he shook.  The whole time Phil just shushed him quietly and rocked them both back and forth, his fingers smoothing soothing circles over Clint’s back and neck.

Clint cried until he couldn’t cry anymore, and all he was left with was a pounding headache and a runny nose.  Phil got them both on their feet, letting Clint cling to him, and led them both to Clint’s bedroom.  They sank down onto the stripped mattress and Clint wrapped his arms around Phil as much as he could, burying the top of his head under Phil’s chin and letting himself be lulled to sleep in his best friend’s arms.

…

Clint woke up in the middle of the night cuddling (there was no other word for it) with his best friend.  He’d never felt safer or more loved than in that moment before his brain caught up and he remembered all the reasons why it wasn’t supposed to be that way.  He’d stayed there until Phil had woken up, and then they’d both pulled away from each other and went about showering and brushing their teeth like they hadn’t spent the night wrapped around each other. 

He went to his calculus exam not long after they ate breakfast, leaving Phil camped out on his couch trying to make his fully-written thirteen page paper reach the fifteen page requirement.  He felt like he hadn’t been outside in years.  The fresh air and sunshine did a lot for his mood, but they didn’t do much to distract from the conflicting emotions roiling up inside him.  Natasha had just left him less than a week ago, and he was still hurting from that.  But he’d woken up this morning, and for a split second while looking at his sleeping face, Clint had seriously considered kissing Phil.  It was wrong on so many levels, because not even twenty-four hours ago he’d cried himself to sleep over his ex-girlfriend.  Besides that, he’d considered kissing _Phil_ , his best friend.  Phil who had been trying to take care of Clint while he was going off the deep end and Clint wanted to repay that by treating him like a rebound?  It was fucked up, was what it was, and he didn’t want to be that guy.   Phil had been his friend for years and Clint was just feeling confused and lonely because he’d been dumped.  He didn’t really want to kiss Phil, and if he ever actually did kiss him he would understand that straight away.  It wasn’t fair to Phil, who was just trying to be the best friend that he could be.  He didn’t need Clint messing with him because of some emotional breakdown.  He was too good.

As if to prove how good he was, Phil was waiting for him outside the physics building when Clint got out of his test.

“Hey, lunch? We didn’t get to have dinner last night.”

“Um, yeah, sure,” Clint answered, brain still reeling from the test and all the emotional bull shit.

They went to a little diner with the best chili Clint had ever had.  It was a bit out of the way of Clint’s apartment, but it was definitely worth it every time they chose to go.  Natasha had always hated it there, because she said it was impossible to find something to eat that tasted good and wasn’t loaded with calories.  Not that she was particularly vain or anything, but she did keep to a pretty strict diet because of the ballet.  It was nice to be in a familiar place with a friend, where he could walk in and the waitress knew him right on site and immediately put his order in.  It was proof that not everything had to change with Natasha leaving.

“You look better today,” Phil said conversationally as Meg-the-waitress set their food in front of them.

“Yeah,” Clint answered.  “I mean…I don’t know? Like I kind of feel a bit better, but at the same time I feel awful about not feeling bad.  Because I’ve spent the last week falling apart and then last night…well, you know.”

Phil’s gaze didn’t waver as Clint trailed off, and Clint wasn’t sure if he was happy about that or not.  It made it seem like there wasn’t any awkwardness coming from Phil’s end, but at the same time it made the awkwardness that Clint was feeling even worse. 

“The whole thing is super fucked up,” Clint sighed, not really knowing if he was talking about Natasha or Phil or both.

“It’s not bad that you don’t feel as bad today,” Phil said, gesturing with a French fry. “You can’t spend forever moping over Natasha.

“But I feel like I shouldn’t be feeling better this fast,” Clint said. “Three years in a relationship and I start getting over it in a week? Doesn’t that just seem wrong?”

“I don’t know,” Phil answered honestly. “I’ve never been in a relationship like that.  But I don’t think you should feel bad about feeling better.”

“Yeah,” Clint said.  He spooned some more chili into his mouth and chewed slowly, trying to figure out what he was supposed to say.  He’d never felt so awkward around Phil before, and he wished desperately he could take it all back to yesterday evening when he’d never even considered Phil might be something more than a friend to him.  It was just too complicated.

“I just…I was thinking today that I might be more interested in someone else more than I thought.  But you know, I’ve been with Tasha and I never really considered it before.  Like, that’s fucked up, right?  I shouldn’t be thinking about someone else so soon.”

Phil grimaced, and then nodded. “Yeah, no, probably not,” he agreed. “Rebounding never works out for anyone.”  And there it was.  Phil would absolutely not take kindly to any sort of advances from Clint.  They would both know it was rebounding, and that just wasn’t okay.  It wasn’t.  Clint had to keep reminding himself of that.

He cleared his throat and set his mind towards changing the subject.  He needed to get his head figured out before he ruined everything.

“So I was thinking of burning my bedspread,” he said.  Phil cocked an eyebrow at him, clearly waiting for Clint to continue.

“Natasha picked it out, and I always hated it.  Burning shit is what people do when they’re getting out of a relationship, right?”

“Well, I guess that’s the trope, yes,” he answered. “But where are you planning to burn an entire comforter within the city limits?”

“I don’t know, a garbage can or something?” he suggest, and Phil smiled in that way that he did when he was resisting the urge to roll his eyes and recount all the ways in which an idea was a stupid one.  Clint saw that smile a lot.

“I’m at least ninety-seven percent certain you’ll get arrested for that,” he said. “You might want to think of another way to mark the end of the Natasha era.”

“Whatever.  I’m still buying new bedding,” Clint told him, shoving his spoon back in his mouth petulantly.

…

“So I think I can trust you not to drink yourself to death now,” Phil said later as Clint was getting ready for his shift at the bar.

“Yeah, that’s probably safe,” Clint agreed, pulling his tightest purple t-shirt over his head and tucking it into his jeans.  He’d found that the amount he got in tips tended to raise in correlation with the tightness of his t-shirts.

“So I think I’m going to start living in my own apartment again.  You don’t need my underfoot all the time.”

“Oh, yeah,” Clint answered, annoyed at the disappointment he felt. “That makes sense.  You leaving tonight?”

“Yeah, I think so,” Phil said.

“Well…I guess just lock up when you go,” Clint shrugged awkwardly. “Thanks for…well, you know.  Everything.”

“It’s no problem, Clint,” Phil assured him.

It should have been simple.  Clint was an adult and he could handle being alone in his apartment.  But like most things in Clint’s life, they didn’t go the way he thought they should.  When he got home that night, his apartment was dark and empty, and he felt the depression rising up under his skin once more.  He scratched at his arms like it might help relieve the feeling in some way, and when that didn’t help he took a hot shower to try to make himself sleepy and went to bed.

He slept like shit.

The next day was a final, work, and then taking home a cute guy from the bar so he could get fucked until he was too exhausted for his brain to keep him awake.  It worked so well the first night he decided to do it again the next night, and then the night after that.  He was pleased to find that it worked very well, even if his partner was always gone when he woke up the next morning.  Some of them left phone numbers, but he had zero interest in calling them.

Unfortunately, being sexed into exhaustion didn’t keep away the dreams.  They’d started a few nights after Phil had gone back to his own place, with just innocent kissing and touching and gasping.  But they’d gotten more and more frequent and explicit since then, and Clint had a hard time keeping himself from hunting his friend down and mauling him.

 Phil still came around, of course, but Clint made no mention of the endless string of one night stands.  He thought that somehow Phil knew anyway, because Phil knew everything.  He never said anything about it, though, so Clint just kept doing it.  It was certainly better than being stuck in his apartment with only his thoughts and his embarrassing wet dreams.

After a month and a half of meaningless sex with near about every person who’d ever walked in to Shanty’s bar, Clint woke up sick of it all.  He was sick of being sad and sick of being lonely, and god damn it he was sick of waking up alone in these sheets his ex-girlfriend had picked out that he still fucking hated.

He rolled out of bed and immediately started ripping off the sheets, rolling them into a ball and tossing them in a corner when he was done.  The bed looked lonely and bereft without any coverings on it, and Clint snorted because he knew that feeling intimately.  His trip to the nearest department store felt like an angry challenge to the world, though he was sure it was all in his head.  No one else seemed to be particularly disturbed by his presence, after all.  He passed a paint store on his way, and was almost half a block away before he turned around and went inside.  He moved like he was on autopilot, finding the paint swatches and choosing a bright purple color called “pantone rosebud”.  He thought he managed to smile at the cashier on the way out, but his brain was whirring around too fast trying to set itself right that he couldn’t be sure.  By the time he got to the department store and had picked out a nice new bedding set (striped with various shades of purple, black, and silver), he still didn’t know exactly what he wanted, but he did know that he didn’t want to go to bed with a stranger that night, and that he missed his best friend.

He called Phil on his way back to the apartment, balancing his phone precariously between his ear and his shoulder because he had a paint can in each hand and a double-sized bedding set under one arm.

“Hey Clint,” Phil greeted.

“Hey, what are you doing right now?”

There was a long pause before Phil answered. “Nothing.  Why? What do you want?”

“Nothing!” Clint retorted, hoping he sounded offended. “A guy can’t just call his best friend on a Tuesday afternoon…”

“Clint,” Phil interrupted.

“Oh, all right,” Clint sighed. “I need you to come help me paint my bedroom.”

“Paint?” Phil questioned, like he thought he’d misheard. “Can you do that?”

“Yes,” Clint responded a bit indignantly. “As long as I paint it back to white before I move out it’s all good.”

“Is it really worth it?” Phil asked doubtfully.

“I’m just trying to create something new here.  I haven’t been doing well, and I’m sure you know that.  I just thought that making the space look like me instead of Natasha might help.”  He felt pretty stupid about it when he said it out loud, but it seemed to win Phil over.

“Yeah, all right,” he agreed. “I’ll be over as soon as I can.”

“Thanks!” Clint chirped, and then he had to stop and set everything down so that he could hang up his phone and get it back in his pocket.

By the time Phil arrived, Clint had gotten everything out of his room except for the bed, which he had dragged to the middle, and had started taping up the molding and window frames.

“You look like you’ve been busy,” Phil said, tossing his bag on the couch next to a crate full of old papers from various classes and a pile of half-full notebooks.

“Yeah,” Clint agreed. “Gotta keep going.”

Phil frowned, but he nodded anyway.

“Are you okay, Clint?” he asked, grabbing an extra roll of tape and starting on the opposite side of the room from where Clint was working.

“Yeah.  No.  I mean…I’ve been sleeping around, I know you know,” he said, and Phil just nodded without speaking. “And I don’t know.  I just woke up this morning and I’m sick of it, you know? I want to do something different.  I don’t want to be sad anymore.  I want to be able to sleep at night and I want…” he trailed off before h could tell Phil that he wanted to stop dreaming about him. “I just want things to be different now.”

“That’s good,” Phil told him. “I’m glad you want things to be better.  I’ll help in any way I can.”

“I know you will,” Clint said, and they smiled at each other for a long moment.  It was the best Clint had felt in weeks.  They fell back into their usual rapport as they got up the rest of the tape and then started painting, and it almost felt like old times, except that Clint really wanted to do something cheesy like start a paint fight and then spend a few hours making out on plastic drop sheets while purple paint dried on their skin.  He did his best to control his urges.

When the room was finally done, Clint almost felt like a new person.  The smell of fresh paint and the empty room felt like some sort of renewal.  Like a clean slate or something and it was just so perfect that he didn’t even think about leaning over and kissing Phil on the mouth.  He realized that he shouldn’t have done it as soon as their lips met, but Phil made a startled noise and then kissed him back, and he found it really hard to regret it.

It was weird how well the fit together, and how they moved like they already knew each other intimately, but Clint was too blissed out to really care.  This was Phil, his best friend that he’d been dreaming about for weeks, pushing him down onto his stripped down bed and climbing on top of him.  It was Phil who was gasping hot breaths into his mouth and against his neck while he worked at getting the button of Clint’s jeans undone.  It was Phil and it was perfect, and suddenly everything seemed like it was going to be okay.

And it was until Clint woke up from his post-orgasmic nap alone and cold, and Phil was nowhere to be found.

* * *

 

“I have had three hours of sleep and I need to be awake in three more hours for an early morning rehearsal.  This better be good,” Natasha growled, and Clint was almost surprised to realize that hearing her voice for the first time in weeks didn’t make him feel anything at all.

“I just need you to answer one question,” Clint said quickly, and Natasha grumbled in that way that said she was listening, but wouldn’t be for long. “When you said there was a better person out there for me, did you mean Phil?”

She was quiet for long enough that Clint started to wonder if she’d fallen asleep again.  Finally, though, she answered.

“Phil may have been who I had in mind.  It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that you two are stupidly in love with each other,” she said.

“I didn’t see it,” Clint said. “I didn’t see it until after you left and Phil picked me up and put me back together.  But I think you’re wrong, Tash.  I think it’s just me.”

“Trust me, Clint, it’s not just you,” she sighed. “By the way, this is terrible break up etiquette.  You’re not supposed to talk to your ex about your new found love.”

“We had sex,” Clint said bluntly, and he could practically hear Natasha’s interest oozing over the line. “We had sex and when I woke up he was gone, just like all the others.”

“All the others?” she asked.

“Well…I might have gotten kind of slutty lately,” he admitted, glad she couldn’t see him blush.  She probably knew he was anyway.

“Well there’s your answer, dumbass,” she grumbled. “You’ve been sleeping around and then you sleep with Phil, who you’ve never shown any interest in before, of course he’s going to think it was just a one night thing.  I am telling you, Phil has been in love with you for years.  You were just too loyal to me to see it properly.”

“What do I do?” he asked her pitifully.

“Go find him and tell him how you feel,” she said like she was talking to a particularly stupid child.  “You love him, he loves you, it’ll work out if you just talk to each other like adults.  I know I didn’t dump your ass so you could be hung up on me forever.”

“God, you’re such a bitch,” he laughed. “Thank you, Tasha.”

“You’re welcome,” she said, and then she hung up.

Clint rolled out of bed and threw on his paint-spattered clothes, which were still scattered across the room from where Phil had tossed them as he’d pulled them off.  He’d hopped awkwardly on one foot and then the other as he’d tied his shoes, and then ran out of his apartment, just barely remembering to take his keys and phone with him as he went.

He ran all fifteen blocks to Phil’s apartment, even though he hadn’t been on a proper run since Natasha left and felt like he might die from it.  He used the key that Phil had had made for him to get in the front door, and then spent five minutes catching his breath in the hall way so he wouldn’t be gasping for air while trying to have a serious conversation.   When he was ready, he knocked on Phil’s door, trying not to be too loud because it was three am, but desperate to be heard and acknowledged.  The door swung open on his third knock, and Phil stood there looking tired and sheepish and reluctant all at the same time.

“I love you,” Clint said in a rush.

“What?” was all Phil said.

“I love you.  I know now that Tasha left because I love you and she knew it even though I didn’t.  And I’m pretty sure you love me too.  And the sex wasn’t because I’ve been sleeping with, like, everybody, I swear.  It was because I felt happy and new and clean and refreshed for the first time in a long time and I wanted to share that feeling with you.  And I’m sorry if I made you feel like I only wanted you for the sex, and I’m sorry if you just wanted me for the sex and I’m now I’m making things awkward, but I love you and I think maybe I’ve always loved you even though I didn’t really know it.”

Phil stared at him, and Clint shifted, shoving his hands in his pockets and staring down at the toes of his purple Chucks. “It would be cool if you would say something,” he said. “Cos I mean I kinda just laid my heart on the line, and you can take it or leave it, but I kinda want to know…”

“Clint,” Phil interrupted. “Are you sure this is what you want?”

“Yeah,” Clint answered. “I want you.  I’ve always wanted you, I think, and I feel really stupid for not having realized it earlier.”

“I want you, too,” Phil answered, and Clint finally looked up from his shoes so he could smile at Phil.  Phil smiled back, a little shy and uncertain, but beautiful and perfect.

“Do you want to come in?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Clint answered. “Yeah, I really do.”


End file.
